AMD goes back to fabs

AMD has expanded its chip assembly and test plant in Suzhou, and it claims that it says will contribute to half of its global production capacity by the end of this year.

According to the Shanghai Daily, AMD will assemble, test and package chips for CPU, GPU and APU in the Suzhou plant.

David Tang, AMD China’s president was quoted as saying that AMD has sold over 30 million APU chips since the chip’s debut last year.

Commenting that the investment represents AMD’s commitment to the China market, he said that the plant will help improve market response and meet the surging chip demand in the global market

According to the Shanghai Daily, AMD has spent $300 million in the expansion, following an initial injection of US$100 million to build the factory in the Suzhou Industrial Park in Jiangsu Province in 2004.

AMD spun off its chip making facilities to GlobalFoundries. However the relationship with the outfit soured when GloFo could not get chips out fast enough.

Although AMD has been seen trying to make deals with TSMC, it is starting to look like the capacity for that plant is maxed out too. This is probably why AMD is having to create its own plants to get the sort of production levels it needs. Still if you said that AMD would get back any fab capacity a couple of years ago, they would put you away.